Thirty skiers were injured on Saturday after their chairlifts violently fell on the slopes of the Astún resort in Spain.
Four people were seriously affected.
But what happened? TF1’s 8 p.m. tried to see things more clearly.
Follow the full coverage
LE WE 20H
A few minutes after the accident, emergency services were dispatched to the scene by helicopter. They discover the first injured and help the uninjured skiers to free themselves from a chairlift that has gone crazy. “People were panicking, especially the younger onessays Jorge, a ski instructor contacted in the report at the top of this article. You know, they’re in a situation where they’re completely trapped, praying for help.”
The events took place in Spain, Saturday January 18, in the Pyrenean resort of Astún in Aragon (north-east), located a few kilometers from the French border. At the end of the morning, the pulley of the chairlift, approximately three meters in diameter, came loose from its base, freeing the cable which then got stuck around a pylon.
To try to find out how such an event could have happened, TF1’s 8 p.m. broadcast submitted the video of the accident to an expert. “It’s 7.50 meters [de câble, NDLR] which are released in one fell swoop. So when you’re in your seat, there’s a shock and a free fall of about a meter. Then, as the cable is stopped by the post, it causes a second shock. That is to say, there you go back”, explains Gérard Bonnaor, legal expert specializing in elevators and ski lifts.
-The director of emergency services in Aragon confirmed that the accident was due to “a problem with the pulley of one of the chairlifts” who has “resulted in a loss of cable tension and the fall of some chairlifts, while others remained suspended”.
-
Read also
“We were laughing, but some were stressed”: funny day for hundreds of skiers stuck on a chairlift
This first analysis is only a rough explanation. Was there a manufacturing or maintenance defect? An investigation was opened to determine the exact causes of the accident which left a total of 30 injured. Ten had to be treated in hospitals, including four in serious condition. The other twenty were treated at the station by emergency services. A young man, who witnessed the incident, told TVE that he saw a cable from the chairlift mechanism jump. “Suddenly the chairlifts started bouncing and people were flying”he described.
Related News :